The Shallow End
by archangel97
Summary: The shallow end is where one can see straight to the bottom, straight to the heart of every activity and every intention. It's where there is no space to hide anything; even kicked up dust settles before long. He hates it, hates it, hates it and yet here he is, perilously exposed and utterly out of control.


**Disclaimer: Everyone and everything belongs to BBC, Mofftiss and ACD**

**I apologize in advance for the metaphor abuse.**

* * *

><p>Well, this could have gone significantly better.<p>

Fingers twitch; he's on his back gazing up, up, up at the starlit sky. London's sky is hardly ever so starry; a few of them must be before his own eyes. Something warm is slowly soaking his shirt, but if he lifts his head to see what it is the stars might overtake him. His chest is burning anyway, and he can't breathe, but every breath he does manage sends white-hot tongues of fire through his arteries, veins, capillaries.

He can't focus, can't find his own hands, can't find anything other than that one point in his chest from which the pain radiates, and his mind seems to be stuck on a constant loop of Shallow. Shallow. Shallow.

No, come on. You can do better than that. There's something happening—no, something's already happened and he is the result. It's incredibly convenient that any clues he might need can be found scattered across his own body instead of miles apart and hidden in the smog London so graciously offers as camouflage; he doesn't quite feel up to racing through a darkened city at present. So, detective, detect yourself.

There's a pounding in his head and at the base of his throat. Erratic pulse, then. Internal bleeding? Definite external bleeding. It's difficult to tell what's what when his nociceptors have commenced the process of sending tiny shards of glass through his nerve fibers, spinal cord, thalamus, cortex.

Perhaps the biggest clue, though, is the hilt of the knife that is currently protruding from his body.

Somewhere in a distant wing of his mind palace an alarm is going off—lights flashing and sirens screaming _dying, dying, dying—_but he dismisses it. Hardly necessary when even without being able to remove his head he can see exactly how screwed he is. But he's not actually dead, not yet, so his heart must have been salvaged. His lung, though, more specifically the left one, is a different story. It's that point of his chest that has hands he can't feel clawing for purchase on the cement beneath him and his mind looping a perpetual reiteration of Shallow. Shallow. Shallow. Shallow. _I can't bloody breathe._

* * *

><p>He shouldn't turn back.<p>

John's muttered "must be nice," is a challenge that will lead to a row, and not one that he has time for. He's made it halfway to his bedroom, John lingering before the telly as it broadcasts some inane story, and he shouldn't turn back.

"What must be nice?" he asks, striding back to where the sliding door separates the kitchen from the living room.

John simply _sits _there, and it's more infuriating than if he had shouted. Sherlock stands, fingers itching, as the seconds tick by and John stares at the wall.

"Just," he finally says passively, "not giving a damn, is all."

Rolling his eyes would incense John further, so Sherlock fights the impulse.

"John—"

"I told you," John interrupts, fury brewing beneath the soldier's mask as he gets up abruptly and turns to face Sherlock directly. He probably doesn't realize that his hands are clenching into fists at his sides. "I told you, Sherlock, to leave it alone."

Sherlock's brow furrows. "Someone was dead—" he begins to protest.

"Like you give a rat's arse about that!" John very nearly yells. His eyes flick towards the staircase, ever conscious of waking Mrs. Hudson. He takes a deep breath and continues, "You realize that you've just ruined a kid's life."

Ruined a kid's life? Murder, no footprints, and a boy who doesn't live in his own home, and John is worried about how the child faired?

"I solved a murder and located a missing child," he says stiffly. "That was what I had been employed to do—"

"And then you kept bloody going!" John says hotly. "I tried to tell you, Lestrade tried to tell you, shit _Anderson _probably tried to tell you to let it end there but you _kept going." _

"What would have had me do?" Sherlock demands. A flush has begun to creep up his neck and he can't tell whether it's the result of anger or indignation or a combination of the two. "Let a man who took a life walk free? Go as far as peeling back the first layer of a crime and then _stop there?"_

"It's not a bloody onion, Sherlock!" John protests, gesticulating with increasing vehemence. "And _yes, _you could have stopped there, and you damn well know you could have, but instead we've now got a mother who may very well never see her child again—"

"If his mother was truly concerned about the child's well-being I doubt she would have thrown him into the middle of—"

"She had no other option!" John cries as though he can't believe what he is hearing. There's the tiniest hint of laughter around the edges of his speech, and that very rarely bodes well for Sherlock. "I don't know if you know this, Sherlock, but there's an old saying _desperate times call for desperate measures."_

"So you're saying that desperation justifies a staged kidnapping that gets a man killed and leaves a child traumatized?" His lip curls back into what probably looks like a snarl because they have reached the point in the argument where John is so wrong that he will never see reason. He should have gone to bed.

John lets out a violent huff of laughter. "Well, it was clearly enough to justify a staged suicide," he spits bitterly.

Oh.

_Oh. _There it is_. _

"And _that," _he declares, jabbing a finger at where John is standing, "_that _is your problem, John. Yours and the boy's mother's. You let your emotions cloud your ability to reason and you let association make you utterly useless in any situation that remotely reminds you of past grievances." John's eyebrows shoot towards his hairline at the word _useless_, and he's gripping the back of his chair now as though readying himself to lob it at Sherlock.

"So you don't feel even the slightest bit sympathetic," he says satirically, as though he already knows the answer (which he probably does). "You've never been in a situation where a fucking _crazy _course of action suddenly seems like the most logical one."

"Oh, don't be preposterous," Sherlock reprimands scornfully. "What that woman did to her son—"

"Was pretty damn close to what you did to _me._" John growls, beating his own chest for emphasis, tangled web of frayed emotions now shining clearly through the argument he is trying to use as a cover.

Oh, for Christ's—"Get _over _it, John!"

There's a beat of silence in which John simply stares at him, a look plastered on his face so incredulous that it would seem comical if it wasn't so sickening. And then he is laughing, loud, harsh barks of sound that don't contain an ounce of humor and have the hair on the back of Sherlock's neck standing on end.

"Yeah," he wheezes, now clutching the back of the chair as though for support, and Sherlock is painfully aware that he is witnessing a man dissolve into hysterics. He shifts, preparing for the outburst that will no doubt follow shortly, and tries not to feel terrified as he watches John laugh.

"Yeah," John breathes again, sounding thoroughly mad, "Get over it. Right." He clutches his stomach for a moment, and then, Mrs. Hudson be damned, he is shouting. "_You fucking __**died, **__Sherlock!" _

Sherlock matches his volume. "That's what people _do!"_

And then John stops. And stares. And Sherlock watches as his gaping mouth closes, then thins, and then as the rest of his face hardens into a look that has a cinder block sliding into the pit of Sherlock's stomach.

John doesn't say anything as they stand there staring at each other. He doesn't need to point out who exactly Sherlock just quoted. He doesn't need to say a word. His silence screams everything he doesn't have to.

* * *

><p>He'd moved.<p>

He'd seen the glint of steel, predicted its trajectory, and within the space of half a second had made a decision and he'd _moved. _

Now, John is probably going to be cross with him, but John has been cross with him for nearly a week now, so it makes little difference. John is very often cross with him, he thinks disjointedly. It seems to be his default setting.

He thinks he sees knees crashing to the ground beside him, but his field of vision is rapidly narrowing so he can't be sure. Shallow. Shallow breaths, shallow vision, shallow.

This could definitely have gone better.

He has just formed a vague thought about how _well, it could also be worse, couldn't it, _when hands relieve his neck of his scarf and wrap it instead around the hilt of the knife, and then it gets worse, God it gets worse, God this is _so much fucking worse. _

He thinks he may be moving, thinks he may be screaming, thinks he may be hearing a voice somewhere hovering over him. He thinks. He thinks. He thinks. _It's the new sexy. _He can't see anything anymore, though, because that final push has the stars he's been seeing finally overtaking everything else, lighting up his body with white-hot fury that has his blood boiling. Boot heels scrape against asphalt and he doesn't know where he is or what is going on or why and that's wrong because he _always _knows.

Someone has stuffed cotton wool in his ears so he can hear little other than a faint, high-pitched ringing and the thudding of his own pulse. As though at the other end of a tunnel, he thinks he hears John.

"_Don't—hold on—Sherlo—can you hear me—adult male—ambulance—" _

It doesn't make sense; none of it does. It probably doesn't have to, though. Probably doesn't matter. Probably going to die.

Definitely going to suffocate.

And then something hot is bubbling to the surface, forcing its way up his throat and past his lips and what little supply of air he had before is completely cut off. He spasms, and then coughs, a horrible, wet hacking that wracks his body and leaves him gasping for air he can't reach. His throat is burning, synchronizing itself with his chest, and every cough sends a fresh wave of pain through him until it's too much, _too much_, why in God's name won't he just die?

And then John's voice cuts through the haze, suddenly razor sharp as he shoves an arm under Sherlock's shoulders and heaves him into a more upright position. _Oh, _that's better. He can breathe again, at least shallowly, though his throat is still protesting emphatically and John won't stop bloody pressing down on his chest.

"Alright, you're alright." He is saying. "Gonna be alright, Sherlock."

_Well, I would be, _he thinks bitterly, _if you would stop using my lung as a stress ball. _Is this payback for making John angry? He wonders distantly if any of this is actually necessary, or if it's just John working off all of the frustration he's had pent up over the past few days.

John is panting in his ear as though he's just finished a long run. "Alright," he breathes again and again. "Gonna be alright."

It is, probably.

* * *

><p>His fingers slide over the strings of the violin, but he hasn't even picked up the bow. Behind him, there is the sound of a mug being set down on the counter, but the man in the kitchen doesn't say a word. Hasn't said a word since he'd muttered something along the lines of "need some air" and all but raced from the flat the night before, leaving Sherlock to stew in the aftermath of what he had done and what would most likely follow.<p>

John is going to leave. He has feared it before, but now he is absolutely certain. He knows because since his outburst John hasn't been stomping about the flat, hasn't been muttering resentfully under his breath, hasn't done any of the trademark _I'm John Watson and you've pissed me off _things Sherlock has become accustomed to. He has been horrifically silent, so that there can be no doubt left in Sherlock's mind.

He doesn't want to think about how soon it will be before there are boxes littering the flat. He doesn't want to think about what it will feel like when he sees John start to turn to the space of the paper where the ads for flats available for rent lurk. He doesn't want to know what he will do if he thinks about that.

The noise of tea making has died down, so Sherlock turns. He isn't prepared for the gaze the doctor has fixed upon him—it's not hard anymore, nor is it angry. He looks tired in a way that a good night's sleep won't rectify.

"John—" he starts.

"It's okay, Sherlock," John cuts him off with a sigh, breaking his gaze and returning to his morning ritual. "It's my fault for trying to fool myself this whole time anyway."

There is a pause in which Sherlock scrambles for the words to deny him, but they don't come.

"You don't care," John continues, sounding exhausted, "not about that poor child, not about me, not about anyone." This isn't an angry John. This isn't a frustrated John. This isn't the John that will grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he sees it John's way. This is a John that has given up, and Sherlock has the horrible urge to vomit.

_Wrong, wrong, wrong! _Surely John must know, surely he had made it obvious before, surely there had been clear signs that even the mediocre mind could not have missed. He wants desperately to shout at him, to make it clear how wrong he is, but the words are trapped behind a door the bears the odious label _sentiment, _which Sherlock has drawn chains across and padlocked several times, drawing a heavy dresser across it for good measure.

John is waiting for him to say something, but he has nothing to say.

* * *

><p>There's a gaping hole in his chest, and the press of cool, hard plastic against his face. Words are tossed over him, some in John's voice, others in voices he doesn't recognize, none of which he understands and he should understand because he <em>always <em>understands.

There's a hand tightly latched to his, so when he tries to reach for the space in his chest so he can rip his heart out through its cavity and be _done _with this business already that hand keeps his firmly in place. There are other hands too, probing, poking, pricking him with needles and altogether probably doing more harm than good. Stupid. They are so stupid. So stupid that they seem to think it's a good idea to keep him from dying as if he has anything better to do.

He realizes that he's probably in an ambulance, a thought confirmed by the sudden pull of straps across his torso, legs, feet, keeping him from jostling as the truck sails over bumps and fails to avoid pot holes. If he does make any feeble attempts to move, they are cut off sharply. Shallow breaths, shallow vision, shallow movements, Shallow Sherlock. He's always hated the shallow end.

* * *

><p>When he was young, his parents used to take him to the local pool so that they could meet their boring friends and waste time with inane chatter. He didn't actually mind too terribly, though, because the water was brilliant. He would invariably wade into the deep end, sliding past the surface and allowing the rush of water to block out the screams of the other children and pretty much everything else. He would dive as deep as he could, and float for as long as he could, let the world carry on at the surface.<p>

One day, he decided to test the capacity of his lungs by diving to the bottom of the deep end and remaining there for as long as he could. He had just barely reached the point where his pulse began to pound in his ears, though, when Mummy began to panic. Then there were lifeguards and arms around him hauling him to the surface and Mummy crying and Mycroft scolding him and he didn't understand and he was angry because they had ruined his experiment.

He was forbidden from going into the pool for a long time, and even after that he was restricted to the shallow end. He loathed it there; there was no space to block out the noise and nowhere to hide from the lifeguards who now kept him thoroughly under their eyes. He stopped going into the pool after a while, and stopped going with his parents to the pool a little while later.

* * *

><p>Probably for the last time, he gets a text from Lestrade and shouts up the stairs for John to accompany him. Probably for the last time, John actually thunks his way down the stairs and follows Sherlock out. Probably for the last time, he bends down next to a corpse with John next to him, asking patient questions and looking things up on his mobile whenever Sherlock asks. If he notices the way John sighs repeatedly or the way Lestrade asks the doctor "Everything alright with you two?" out of the corner of his mouth, he does not acknowledge it. He lets his deductions cover his thoughts the way his coat covers his body and has firmly locked them away behind the <em>Sentiment <em>door by the time they return to the flat.

His elation upon reentering Baker Street isn't entirely feigned. This is a puzzle, an actual proper one, and its maker is the first actually _decent _criminal Sherlock has happened upon in quite a while. Even better was that he had already slipped up, and it was in a way so subtle that Sherlock himself had come treacherously close to missing it.

Threads of brown hair littering the body. A clump of it sitting in the victims slackened palm, presumably as the result of a struggle. Doubtless anyone who had witnessed him passing will describe him as a tall brunette.

Yet if the man actually has brown hair, Sherlock will eat the deerstalker he has stabbed to the wall by the mirror. Because there, glinting in the sunlight from its perch stuck to the victim's sleeve, had been the tiniest sliver of ginger.

No, John, that isn't indicative of more than one assailant. There had been brown hair everywhere, can't you see? Far too much for a normal head of hair to lose at once, even while in the midst of a scrape, unless he is undergoing chemotherapy or suffering from radiation exposure. It was planted there, all of it, ripped purposefully from the wig on his head to make it seem as though he was giving us a clue as to what he looks like, but oh, he's much cleverer than that.

And wasn't it the description of a witness of that stabbing a week back that had placed a ginger-haired man at the scene moments after the crime? That would have been cause enough to require a change of appearance, but if the murderers are one and the same, it means we have a serial killer on our hands and _oh, _John, it's been _so _long since I've had a chance at a proper one.

He shoots his thoughts left and right, pinning more and more notes to his map as he slowly peels back the layers the obscure his killer because yes, John, sometimes it is a bloody onion, steadily working himself up into a frenzy until his focus has narrowed down to his own voice and the map of photos pinned to the wall before him and he doesn't notice that John's steady responses have slowly faded into silence.

"—So he lures them into an alleyway to make it look like a drug deal gone wrong, then plants red herrings all over the place to put coppers off his scent," he is spouting when he is drawn from his thoughts by the door creaking open. He turns, and there is John, shrugging off his coat and carrying a bag of takeaway. He has clearly been out for a while, but there is no telling how long Sherlock has been talking to an empty flat.

"_Do you just carry on talking when I'm away?"_

"_I dunno, how often are you away?"_

John gives him a lingering glance that shows that he knows exactly what he has just walked in on. Any other time he would have met such a scene with a roll of the eyes and a not-completely-indignant huff, but now his mouth thins and he moves to heft the bag onto the table.

"Getting cold," is all he says. He hasn't tried to convince Sherlock to eat in days.

Sherlock can practically see the train of thought John is riding. _How much can he care about you if he doesn't even realize when you're gone?_ He wants to scream from the top of the hospital from which he leapt years ago how wrong John is until all of London and beyond understands, but he knows that that will never happen. Not even close.

This is why he never keeps relationships. This is why he has been alone for so long. On the rare occasions that he makes connections, forms bonds that outsiders would think impossible, articulating the depth of his fondness proves virtually impossible because to do so would be to set up the expectation for affection he could never deliver.

"I told you once that I don't have friends," he says to John's back, "Now you know why."

John turns. "You also once told me that you've just got one," he says.

He can't make John understand, so he turns back to his work.

* * *

><p>The shallow end is where one can see straight to the bottom, straight to the heart of every activity and every intention. It's where there is no space to hide anything; even kicked up dust settles before long. He hates it, hates it, hates it and yet here he is, perilously exposed and utterly out of control.<p>

He is being lifted, moved, jostled, and someone is shouting at him entirely too loudly. Rude, he thinks, to choose to shout at him the one moment when he can't garner a response. Especially rude that the yelling is being done by a stranger when there are throngs of Scotland Yard officers who have been waiting for such an opportunity.

Light suddenly blinds him and he realizes with a jolt that his eyes have opened somewhere along the way. Faces he doesn't know loom over him and hands he doesn't know push at him and somewhere in the crowd he manages to single out John. John, who is wearing the first expression Sherlock has seen in days that isn't anger or fatigue. The victory is a small one, though, because what he's displaying now looks remarkably like fear.

John catches his eye, seems to realize that he's at least semi-conscious, and then rushes forwards to grip his face, searching for something Sherlock can't help him find. He doesn't like the scrutiny regardless, because at this point he feels as though John might as well be able to x-ray him with a look; he may as well be a pile of bones with every thought that has ever crossed his mind etched into across their surfaces.

He knows what he has done. He knows what John has seen. He is more terrified of what might follow than he had been when John had walked out the door.

John raises his head to speak to someone Sherlock can't see and throws the word _shock _into the air.

_I'm not in shock, _Sherlock wants to protest, noting the distinct lack of hideous orange blankets and drawing his conclusion based on that. _It doesn't even hurt anymore, _he insists. Somewhere in the private clinic section of his mind palace a voice that sounds uncomfortably like John's is telling him that _that's fucking shock, you dolt, _but it doesn't matter because his eyes are sliding closed once more and his grip on reality is rapidly depleting.

"If you fucking try to die, Sherlock," John's voice is suddenly in his ear, dragging him back from the edge for a moment, and it seems he has rediscovered his ability to be angry, "if you even fucking _think _about trying to die…"

He doesn't get to hear the end of the threat, though, because he has already rolled back into the confusion.

* * *

><p>He doesn't mean to wade directly into the shallow end, doesn't mean to filter every bit of murky water out until it is crystal clear and utterly transparent, but the blade in the man's hand does it for him and he winds up flaying open both his body and mind in one go.<p>

It starts with a note, passed discreetly from one of his homeless spies into his coat pocket, and then it escalates until he is panting his way down one of London's grimiest alleyways, book-ended front and back by the ginger-haired killer and John, respectively. He isn't prepared for it when the man skids to a halt and whirls to face them, and that is probably why it is easy for the suspect to barrel into him, knocking all six feet of him to the slick ground. It's embarrassing that that one move has the wind knocked out of him, and even more embarrassing that he lies where the killer put him for a good few seconds, too dazed to realize that John has tackled the man in a similar fashion. The brown wig flies off his head and skids into the darkness, looking like an incredibly furry rodent as it does so.

John has already gotten a few punches in by the time Sherlock gets to his feet, stomach roiling, but the ginger man has the advantage of his height (though most of London probably has that over John) and half a second later he has John pinned against the brick wall behind him, meaty hands gripping tenaciously onto his throat.

It happens so quickly that Sherlock doesn't have time to think past his instincts. Later, he will look back and muse that it's the fact his actions were the first to come to his mind that reveals the most about him, but he couldn't have helped it if he'd tried.

John wedges a leg into the space between him and the suspect, boot heel pressed against the man's abdomen, and kicks out with such power that the killer goes stumbling backward. There is a moment in which John heaves out a breath and Sherlock stands there as though frozen, and then he sees it.

He sees the glint of the nearby street lamp off steel, registers the knife—_of course he has a knife, he kills people by stabbing them, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid—_and he watches as the man takes a step in the direction of a still panting and almost completely defenseless John.

Of course he moves. Of course he kicks violently against the press of the water surrounding him, propelling himself through it until he has crossed the divider that separates the obscurity of his normal state of being from the crystal clarity that most people wade through all their lives, wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Of course he does.

It's not until later, when he is already impaled by a butcher's knife and falling none too gently to the pavement, that he realizes exactly what he has just done—there is no denying the force with which he had pushed John out of the way, nor is there denying the readiness with which he had accepted the probability that in doing so he would take the knife that was meant for John. He can't even claim that it was to get back into John's good books, he thinks as a wrapper on the ground crinkles against his cheek and he hears what sounds remarkably like John beating the absolute shit out of someone—there had been no time to think _ah, here is my chance to get John to stay_—only time to realize that while the idea of 221B Baker Street without John is unappealing, the idea of the world without John entirely is absolutely abhorrent.

He doesn't know what scares him more—the fact that his affection for John has penetrated so deeply into his consciousness that he is willing to die in the man's place, or the fact that he has just made his mentality concerning the doctor blatantly obvious.

Perhaps what scares him the most is that he is more afraid of John's reaction to his death than he is of actually dying.

* * *

><p>It's unclear as to whether or not he is dead.<p>

When he looks down at his own body, there is still a gaping hole in his chest and blood seeping down his front, so the answer is probably _not quite yet. _The fact that he doesn't feel any pain, though, suggests that he is still in shock, so the answer is probably also _give it a bit. _

The fact that his brother is standing at the window on the other side of what appears to be the sitting room of 221B is enough to suggest that he has in fact died and been transported to Hell, to be locked in a room with his brother for all eternity. He is distracted by that thought by what Mycroft appears to be staring out the window into, though—his brother is not looking out over London, but rather into the recesses of some giant, shifting mass of deep blue matter. When he opens his mouth to speak, Mycroft beats him to it.

"Water," he answers Sherlock's unspoken question, turning to face him, "and it would appear that you have dove too deep, little brother," he adds.

Too deep? "But I thought I'd just—"he starts to protest.

"Oh, you did," Mycroft assures him placidly. "Make no mistake; your actions have been more than enough exhibition for the good doctor to make his deductions. Right now, though, you're not doing anything. Not moving, not talking, hardly breathing, in fact." His brother smiles sarcastically. "There is absolutely no way for anyone to tell what is going on in your head," he says, "A dream come true for you, I'm sure."

Sherlock doesn't reply, which is unsettling in itself because he _always _has a reply for his brother, even when his brother is merely an image conjured up by his own subconscious. He doesn't know how to reply, though, because Mycroft's assumption doesn't ring as true as he had thought it would.

"Unless it isn't," his brother suggests softly.

Sherlock ignores him in favor of moving to gaze out the window, trying to see beyond the column of water that seems to be pressing insistently against the glass. It would seem he has developed a knack for extended metaphors.

"Why did you never tell him why you jumped off that roof?" Mycroft demands from behind him.

Sherlock risks a glance at him, but his brother's gaze is akin to that of a hawk's, so he turns back to the window.

"You know why," he mutters to his reflection in the glass.

"I'm sure I do," Mycroft replies aloofly "considering that I'm inside your head. I do think, though, that now would be a proper time to reconsider those motivations, since every pretense you have spent your years with John Watson building up has now been effectively wiped away."

It's not Mycroft but his own subconscious speaking to him, and yet he is loath to accept the idea. He hates that even the image of his brother is there to see this moment of weakness, of indecisiveness—one of the rare situations in which Sherlock has no idea how to press forward.

Well, dying is always an option, but that would probably make John cross with him.

"I told you, Sherlock," Mycroft says. "Don't get involved."

"I'm not _involved,_" Sherlock scoffs, turning back to face his brother, whose face remains infuriatingly impassive.

"No," Mycroft agrees in a tone that clearly says he is merely pacifying Sherlock. "Enjoy that," he adds, "and do take my advice into consideration."

There's a scathing retort on the tip of his tongue, but before he can utter it there is the sound of breaking glass behind him, and then the windows of his imaginary 221B are simultaneously shattering to let the tide in. Then he is being pushed off his feet, and the image of his flat and that of his brother disappear in favor of crushing blue, and he is floating, floating, floating towards the surface.

* * *

><p>So, not dead, then.<p>

Not entirely, at least—the irritating _beep, beep, beep _of a nearby heart monitor and the stinging pull across his chest that speaks of stitches and probably a chest tube as well are indicators enough that he has pulled through whatever overexertion the hospital staff has been through to keep him breathing.

There's a lawn mower going somewhere outside. God, he thinks, someone kill it.

It takes far longer than he likes to blink his way past the fog of what has likely been days of sleep and for the swimming white shapes before him to arrange themselves into a hospital room. It takes even more time to reconnect his brain with the rest of his body, identifying the whereabouts of his legs, arms, hands, feet, fingers, toes. The awareness of his body doesn't amplify the pain, though, which remains little more than a pinprick of pressure against the probable entry points of the tubes to which he is connected. Morphine, then. Brilliant.

It makes everything more than a bit hazy—everywhere his eyes land the figures need a moment to adjust themselves into actual objects. It's a colossal effort, then, when he decides to dredge up his (pathetically little) strength and attempt to turn his head—whether he has sensed the presence of another being in the room or to calculate exactly _how _to kill the lawn mower, he is unsure.

And oh, there is John.

John who is still dressed in the clothes he was wearing when Sherlock last saw him (_hasn't gone home), _who is reading what looks like _Frankenstein _for the thousandth time with a look of intense concentration on his face (_getting restless), _whose brow seems permanently furrowed and who has the beginnings of bags underneath his eyes (_hasn't slept). _

Sherlock opens his mouth to speak, even though he isn't entirely sure he has the capability, but John beats him to it.

"I…have…_never,"_ he says slowly, somehow knowing Sherlock is awake without actually looking, "been so bloody thrilled to have been proven wrong."

Sherlock's eyes flutter and he doesn't know how to respond, if he can at all. How is he supposed to explain to John that no, he wasn't entirely wrong when he said it, that Sherlock cares about very few people and never really had, that John is one of the few exceptions? He's spared the necessity of responding, though, because calloused hands smooth their way across his forehead and brush his hair out of his eyes, and it feels like a benediction. For now, he has been forgiven. For now, John won't leave. And so Sherlock lets it be, lets him carry on being wrong just this once, and goes back to sleep in the peaceful silence of the company of a friend.

* * *

><p>He doesn't remember the dream, even though Mycroft himself comes to visit the next day ("I have enough to do without having to take care of your would-be assassins, brother dear"). The seed his brother planted, though, takes root nonetheless, steadily germinating during his stay in hospital. John stays by his side the entire time, which is a relief because the temptation to deduce the idiots in charge of caring for him until they break is so strong he could cry. He accidentally deduces a nurse's breakup with her long-term boyfriend after she condescendingly tries to explain to him what his x-rays mean, and he has the nagging suspicion that she lowers the lockout on his PCA after that because the pain gets distinctly sharper after she leaves.<p>

It's not until he's home, away from the heartbroken nurse and the morphine and the _goddamn lawnmower _that it sprouts, and he does it so clumsily that looking back on the conversation still makes him shudder months later.

He is sitting on the couch because that's all John has let him do for the past few days, the man himself fussing over tea Sherlock will probably have to actually drink this time. The steady soldier's march passes into the living room, and a mug enters his line of vision, and he looks up to say thank you, but instead what comes out is "He would have killed you."

It's a quiet murmur, as conversational as the weather, and so out of place that John's brow furrows and he actually glances behind him at the empty flat as though to check that Sherlock hadn't been talking to someone else. Having ascertained that much, he turns back to Sherlock and says slowly, "I...yeah, I'd sort of got that much already." He wanders over to his chair and lowers himself into it, adding, "I mean, I didn't see the knife until after you pushed me but I got the gist—"

"I wasn't talking about the serial killer." Sherlock cuts him off because the longer he waits for John to get it the more tempted he is to retreat.

The confusion on John's face deepens. "Not…? Then who—?" but he cuts himself off this time, looking around the flat as though the answer might be inscribed on the wallpaper. Sherlock doesn't say anything, can't say anything, hoping that John will understand on his own so that Sherlock won't have to deliberately make the leap himself.

Seconds that could be mistaken for months tick by as Sherlock performs the herculean task of staying silent while watching John struggle, but just as he is about to blurt the name out of impatience the doctor's eyes fall on the front page of the yellowing newspaper that is stabbed to the mantle next to the Cluedo board: the one that boasts **SUICIDE OF FAKE GENIUS. **

Sherlock stares at it with him. He's seen John eyeing it before—seen the hatred that passes over his friend's face whenever he notices it, seen the longing to tear it from its perch and fuel the fire with it—but since his return he has kept it as a reminder of the reason why he didn't make that leap his final one, why he came back and why he is still here. And he watches that reason turn his head to give Sherlock a look that shows how completely he understands what Sherlock has been trying to say.

"You mean—" he starts.

"Three victims, three bullets, and—after Moriarty shot himself—one call-off code," Sherlock supplies. He takes a sip of his tea to avoid looking at John, whose expression is rapidly approaching horror.

"_Let me give you a little extra incentive—your friends will die if you don't."_

"Mother of God," John mutters, drifting back to gaze at the newspaper cover as though just now seeing it for the first time.

"_Your only three friends in the world will die—"_

"John," he says to shove the memory aside. John's gaze swivels back to rest on him, and there is an incredibly long moment in which they refuse to break eye contact while Sherlock gears up to actually push himself into the shallow end of his own volition for once, to flay open his chest cavity and allow the fact that he had died for John and would readily do so again a thousand times over to spill forth—

But he doesn't have to. John Watson extends a hand and gently pulls him to the surface.

Later—after John has edged his way around the coffee table and pulled Sherlock into a hug that, for all its feeling, is still mindful of his stitches—after a murmured "Never think I wouldn't do the same, yeah?" has lifted what feels like a literal weight off Sherlock's thin shoulders—after John has pulled back to give him a brief and absolutely-not-teary smile, nodded once in his soldier's way of closing a subject, and meandered off to find something new to fuss over—Sherlock is left to marinate in the knowledge that he is a complete and utter imbecile. Because how could the mind that he boasts to be that of a genius have gone thirty plus years without realizing that that the shallow end is where there is a solid ground his feet can actually reach, where it's the work of seconds to push himself above the surface and actually _breathe?_

As the sun sets over Baker Street, John glances up from the paper—the sports section, not the ads for rent—to where he is frozen on the couch and asks "Alright?" and Sherlock knows right then and there that it is. That it's fine, actually. It's all fine.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong>

**This one's been nagging at me since at least June, but I can't get out of my own way so here we are four months later. **

**This is also mostly because I wanted to do a little way-too-in-depth analysis of Sherlock's aloofness, since it's so so so so clear that he cares about John but bends over backwards to make people think he doesn't give half a damn about anyone. Since I like to make things way more angsty and complicated than need be, I like to imagine that he does that because he's used to people leaving, so by convincing others he doesn't care, he's mostly convincing himself so it doesn't bother him when they're gone. Either that or I just like hurting him because I'm a bad, bad person. **

**Reviews are hella rad but like if you want to ship me a crate of brownies instead that's cool too**

**-Dee**


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